


Halved

by navree



Category: Grey's Anatomy
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, I mean sorta, Post-Season/Series 06 Finale, but basically I had a thought
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-11
Updated: 2018-02-11
Packaged: 2019-03-15 02:54:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13604052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/navree/pseuds/navree
Summary: He knows that she's uninjured, but he still wants to check, because Oh God she could have died.Lexie tells Mark who the hospital shooter was, and who he was there for.





	Halved

**Author's Note:**

> Jetlag means that I wake up at odd hours and can't go back to sleep, and thus spend many of those odd hours rewatching Grey's and remembering how Mark and Lexie were some of the best characters on that whole show and Shonda did 'em dirty. Also, she missed an opportunity for one of her big dramatic scenes that she loves, so I'm doing it for her.  
> as always, comments (either positive or constructive) are always welcome and much appreciated!

Lexie is shaking her leg, her knee bouncing up and down, her foot tapping on the floor as she waits, her balled first resting on her moving thigh. She’s not looking at him, not looking at herself, not looking at the ground, not looking at anything. Her gaze is a million miles away. Mark wishes he could do that. Whenever he’s anxious and afraid, he can’t drift away into a dreamland, or a nightmare land as it looks like Lexie’s in. He’s hyper vigilant, focused, incapable of distracting himself from the situation at hand. The sound of Lexie’s leg on the floor creates a steady, nerve wracking rhythm. 

On impulse, Mark grabs her hand, forceful, grounding. Her leg stops moving, and Lexie finally looks at him. There’s something unreadable in her eyes. He hopes that his have reassurance in them, because Lexie appears to be on the razor thin edge of a break down. 

“He’s gonna be OK,” he says kindly. Lexie bites down on her lip, light brown gaze darting away. “Karev’ll be fine. He’ll pull through like he always does.” A small huff of laughter from Lexie, and Mark allows himself to smile. He was able to elevate her mood, just a little bit, just for a while. “And then he can annoy us all for the next eighty years?” Lexie’s looking at him again, this time with a small smile. Goddamn, it’s a beautiful smile. 

“You think that we’ll all be hanging out together in eighty years?” She sounds incredulous and joking, more like herself than she’s been all day. Mark revels in it, a brief bit of normalcy in all the chaos. She needs it; he needs it. 

“Oh, absolutely.” There’s a false conviction in his voice. “We’ll all be in the same retirement home, sitting in our rocking porches and telling the same surgery jokes when we’re old and gray and with no teeth in our mouths.” This makes Lexie laugh for real, a short burst of it with a high note of hysteria. Mark chuckles with her, and they lapse into a momentary silence. He doesn’t let go of her hand, and she doesn’t try to pull away. 

“Mark?” He meets her eyes. 

“What is it?” For a brief, wild moment, he thinks maybe that she’ll tell him that she’s over Karev, that she wants him back. The thought’s gone almost as soon as it comes, because it’s ridiculous. Not only is it not the place, but he can still hear her declaration of love for the other man ringing in his ears. 

“It was Gary Clark.” For a second, he doesn’t understand.

”What?”

”The...the shooter.” Lexie stutters over the word, trips over it like a child tripping on an uneven sidewalk. “I saw him, when I was getting the blood for Alex. It was Gary Clark.” Mark wants to slap himself, or have Lexie slap him. He sent her out there, alone, and she almost walked right into a death trap. What kind of fool was he?

”I never should have sent you out there,” he mutters, and Lexie turns her hand over in his so that she’s squeezing his fingers with a tight reassurance. 

“If you hadn’t, Alex would be dead right now,” she murmurs. “You made the right call there Mark.” He begins to shake his head. “You did.” Lexie sighs deeply, biting down on her lip. “Besides, we might have run into him even if I hadn’t gone out there to get the blood.” Marks’ brow furrows in confusion. 

“What does that mean?” Lexie looks away from him, and her leg starts bouncing again. He presses down harder on her hand, stilling her, reassuring her. With his free hand, he puts his fingers under her chin and guides her so that she’s looking at him. There’s a frightful look in her eyes, a doe caught in the hunter’s rifle look in her eyes. Was this how she looked when she saw Gary Clark? Mark doesn’t want to know. 

“He was upset about his wife,” she begins, slowly and carefully. “When they came in, he wanted to save her. He wanted to ignore the paperwork and keep her hooked up to the machine until she woke up. That’s why he came here.” Now she was speaking hurriedly, the hysteria back, titching her voice upwards an octave. Mark doesn’t interrupt. “He wanted revenge for his wife. And he told me-” Lexie’s voice wavers and stops briefly. She gathers herself and continues. “He told me that he had come here for three people. For Derek, because he was the Chief and he allowed us to unplug his wife. For Webber, because he was her doctor.”

Mark can tell where this is going, and a black and terrible anger begins to grow in his gut. “Lexie-”

”And for me,” she finishes, rushed and almost on the brink of tears. “Because I unplugged the machine.” Lexie takes a deep breath. “He was going to shoot me. He was ready to shoot me, but one of the SWAT people got to him first and I was able to get away.” Rage explodes all throughout Mark’s body, hot and fierce. He knows that she's uninjured, but he still wants to check, because Oh God she could have died. The realization hits him just as quickly, and his anger is fused with a horrible fear, a retrosepctive fear that he almost could have lost Lexie. He makes a jolty move as if to stand; Lexie’s hand on his is in the only thing keeping him in place. 

“I’m going to kill him.” His voice is filled with fury. “If he’s not already dead, that son of a bitch is going to be!” His voice is rising, and Lexie’s own free hand comes to his arm, keeping him in place. 

“It’s over,” she says, as if that’s any consolation. “Nothing happened.”

”Something could have!” He really was a moron to have let her go out there alone. He had known there was a shooter; he had felt the terror coursing through his veins when that first gunshot happened and he thought the end had come for them all. And yet he sent Lexie out there, Lexie who he had told not a month ago that he loved. “I should have gone with you.” 

“Mark, you can’t beat yourself up over this.” He looks at her, and she still looks scared, but fierce too. An odd combination, one that sets a strange fire in her eyes. “We’re here now. We’re safe.” It’s something of a comfort, but not really. Still, Mark is looking her over, looking for blood or wounds or something to further indict him for an almost criminal mistake. 

“Something could have,” he repeats, low, almost to himself. “Something could have happened, and you could have...” He cuts himself off. Lexie still hasn’t taken her hand away from his, and it’s a silent forgiveness for his transgression. Instead, her thumb runs soothingly along his knuckles. 

“I know,” she murmurs. “And I was scared. Really scared.” Her voice quavers, then steadies. “But nothing happened. I got away, and we saved Alex, and got out of that hospital without a scratch. Somehow,” she adds with a slight giggle, and Mark allows himself to smile. “So there’s no need to cry over spilled milk or anything like that. I’m fine, you’re fine, and like you said, Alex is going to be fine too.” Mark’s heartbeat, which has been racing for the past minute, begins to slow down, allowing the softness of her words to soothe him. 

Lexie leans into him ever so slightly, and that’s enough of an invitation that he needs to wrap his free arm around her shoulders, pulling her close and tucking her against his chest. She smells like Lexie, like soap and hospital gear and sweetness, and her hair is soft on his cheek as he rests his head against hers. Lexie curls up against him, fingers wound in the fabric of his shirt, her hold on his hand tight again, as tight as his hold is on hers. 

“I’m not letting you out of my sight for a long time,” he murmurs into her hair. “Do you hear me, Little Grey? A long time.” He can feel her smile against his chest. 

“I’m counting on it.” Mark allows himself to press a kiss to the top of her head, his lips lingering, hard and trembling, for a while. He closes his eyes for a minute, feels the heat behind them, and then reopens them again, pulling Lexie as close as he can without suffocating. 

They stay like that for as long as they possibly can. 


End file.
